Search Worlds Without End

Contains:

• The Demolished Man - (1952) - novel
• Tiger! Tiger! - (1956) - novel (variant of The Stars My Destination)
• Time Is the Traitor - (1953) - novelette
• They Don't Make Life Like They Used To - (1963) - novelette
• The Pi Man - (1959) - shortstory
• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - shortstory
• Will You Wait? - (1959) - shortstory
• The Flowered Thundermug - (1964) - novelette
• Out of This World - (1964) - shortstory

Regina and her bee-ladies, bored members of the elite, while away the idle hours by playing at conjuring the Devil - a game which leads to horrifying consequences.

Half finished upon Bester's death, and completed by Zelazny, "Psychoshop" envisions a commercial establishment that attracts customers ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to a sorcerer intent on fabricating the Beast of Revelations.

This edition brings together a range of works by Alfred Bester. It includes the novel "The Demolished Man", "Hell is Forever" and "The Four Hour Fuge", there are also Bester's writings on noted celebrities such as Woody Allen, Rex Stout and Issac Asimov.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Redemolished) - (2000) - essay by Richard Raucci
• The Probable Man - (1941) - novelette
• Hell Is Forever - (1942) - novella
• The Push of a Finger - (1942) - novella
• The Roller Coaster - (1953) - shortstory
• The Lost Child - shortfiction
• I Will Never Celebrate New Year's Again - (1963) - shortstory
• Out of This World - (1964) - shortstory
• The Animal Fair - (1972) - novelette
• Something Up There Likes Me - (1973) - shortstory
• The Four-Hour Fugue - (1974) - shortstory
• Gourmet Dining in Outer Space - (1960) - essay
• Place of the Month: The Moon - essay
• The Sun - essay
• Science Fiction and the Renaissance Man - (1959) - essay
• A Diatribe Against Science Fiction - essay
• The Perfect Composite Science Fiction Author - essay
• My Affair With Science Fiction - (1974) - essay
• John Huston's Unsentimental Journey - (1959) - essay
• Rex Stout - (1967) - interview of Rex Stout - interview
• Conversation with Woody Allen - (1969) - interview of Woody Allen - interview
• Isaac Asimov - (1973) - interview of Isaac Asimov - interview
• Robert Heinlein - (1973) - interview of Robert A. Heinlein - interview
• The Demolished Man: the Deleted Prologue - shortfiction
• Writing and The Demolished Man - essay
• In Memoriam: Alfred Bester (1913-1987) - essay by Gregory Benford and Isaac Asimov

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology (1973), edited by Harry Harrison. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3 (1974), edited by Terry Carr, and Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Third Annual Collection (1974), edited by Lester del Rey. The story is included in the collections Star Light, Star Bright (1976) and Redemolished (2000).

TIME, SPACE, AND THE FUTURE

Here is your passport into the fascinating world of science fiction... eleven dazzling, jet-propelled, rocket-paced tales of tomorrow by one of today's most inventive writers, Alfred Bester, author of The Demolished Man and The Dark Side of the Earth.

Table of Contents:

• 7 • Disappearing Act • (1953) • short story
• 24 • Adam and No Eve • (1941) • short story
• 38 • Star Light, Star Bright • (1953) • short story
• 54 • The Roller Coaster • (1953) • short story
• 61 • Oddy and Id • (1950) • short story
• 76 • The Starcomber • novelette (variant of 5,271,009 1954)
• 110 • Travel Diary • (1958) • short story
• 113 • Fondly Fahrenheit • (1954) • novelette
• 133 • Hobson's Choice • (1952) • short story
• 148 • The Die-Hard • (1958) • short story
• 152 • Of Time and Third Avenue • (1951) • short story

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1972. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 20th Series (1973), edited by Edward L. Ferman. It is included in the collection Redemolished (2000).

Alfred Bester's first science fiction novel since The Stars My Destination was a major event. A fast-moving adventure story set in Earth's future. A band of immortals - as charming a bunch of eccentrics as you'll ever come across - recruit a new member, the brilliant Cherokee physicist Sequoya Guess. Dr. Guess, with group's help, gain control of Extro, the supercomputer that controls all mechanical activity on Earth. They plan to rid Earth of political repression and to further Guess's researches - which may lead to a great leap in human evolution to produce a race of supermen. But Extro takes over Guess instead and turns malevolent. The task of the merry band suddenly becomes a fight in deadly earnest for the future of Earth.

Sequoya Guess, whom they love, must be killed. And how do you kill an immortal?

The Dark Side of the Earth (1964) contains the short stories:

• "Time is the Traitor"
• "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" (Hugo Award Nominee)
• "Out of This World"
• "The Pi Man" (Hugo Award Nominee)
• "The Flowered Thundermug"
• "Will You Wait?"
• "They Don't Make Life Like They Used To"

When his lover is kidnapped by the evil Duke of Death, Rogue Winter, King of the Maori Commandos searches the solar system for her and uncovers evidence of an unlimited energy source in the underground torture chambers of Triton.

In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen. In 2301 murder is virtually impossible, but one man is about to change that...

Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. The Demolished Man is a masterpiece of imaginative suspense, set in a superbly imagined world in which everything has changed except the ancient instinct for murder.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1974. The story can also be found in The 1975 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Best SF: 1974 (1975), edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, The Best of Analog (1978), edited by Ben Bova, and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 2 (2000), edited by Frederik Pohl. It is included in the collections The Light Fantastic (1976), Starlight (1976) and Redemolished (2000).

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1958. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Eighth Series (1959), edited by Anthony Boucher
• Voyagers in Time: Twelve Stories of Science Fiction (1967), edited by Robert Silverberg
• The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited by David G. Hartwell
• One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2003), edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

It is included in the collections The Dark Side of the Earth (1964), The Light Fantastic (1976) and Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (1997).

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1959. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series (1960), edtied by Robert P. Mills, Alpha 1 (1970), edited by Robert Silverberg, The Great SF Stories 21 (1959) (1990), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, and The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is included in the collections The Dark Side of the Earth (1964), Star Light, Star Bright (1976) and Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (1997).

"Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester's methods. His stories never stand still a moment."
--Damon Knight, author of Why Do Birds

Alfred Bester took science fiction into hyperdrive, endowing it with a wit, speed, and narrative inventiveness that have inspired two generations of writers. And nowhere is Bester funnier, speedier, or more audacious than in these seventeen short stories--two of them previously unpublished--that have now been brought together in a single volume for the first time.

Read about the sweet-natured young man whose phenomenal good luck turns out to be disastrous for the rest of humanity. Find out why tourists are flocking to a hellish little town in a post-nuclear Kansas. Meet a warlock who practices on Park Avenue and whose potions comply with the Pure Food and Drug Act. Make a deal with the Devil--but not without calling your agent. Dazzling, effervescent, sexy, and sardonic, Virtual Unrealities is a historic collection from one of science fiction's true pathbreakers.

"Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction."
--Harry Harrison

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Virtual Unrealities) - (1996) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• 3 - Disappearing Act - (1953) - short story
• 22 - Oddy and Id - (1950) - short story
• 38 - Star Light, Star Bright - (1953) - short story
• 56 - 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette
• 91 - Fondly Fahrenheit - (1954) - novelette
• 112 - Hobson's Choice - (1952) - short story
• 127 - Of Time and Third Avenue - (1951) - short story
• 136 - Time Is the Traitor - (1953) - novelette
• 159 - The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - short story
• 173 - The Pi Man - (1959) - short story
• 191 - They Don't Make Life Like They Used To - (1963) - novelette
• 225 - Will You Wait? - (1959) - short story
• 233 - The Flowered Thundermug - (1964) - novelette
• 273 - Adam and No Eve - (1941) - short story
• 287 - And 3½ to Go - short story
• 292 - Galatea Galante - (1979) - novelette (variant of Galatea Galante, The Perfect Popsy)
• 334 - The Devil Without Glasses - novelette

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel which had ignored his distress calls and left him to die.

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iPicturebooks has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

16 stories by a master of science fiction. Space travel, time machines, runaway robots, wit, insanity, intelligence and non-stop imagination, Alfed Bester has crammed all of these and more into his new, dynamic 2-in-1 volume Starlight. Containing all the stories from both The Light Fantastic and Star Light, Star Bright, each tale in this mammoth collection opens up new vistas of wonder and amazement.

Contents:

• 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette
• Ms. Found in a Champagne Bottle - (1968) - shortstory
• Fondly Fahrenheit - (1954) - novelette
• Comment on Fondly Fahrenheit - (1970) - essay
• The Four-Hour Fugue - (1974) - shortstory
• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - shortstory
• Disappearing Act - (1953) - shortstory
• Hell Is Forever - (1942) - novella

Contents:

• "Adam and No Eve"
• "Time Is the Traitor"
• "Oddie And Id"
• "Hobson's Choice"
• "Star Light, Star Bright"
• "They Don't Make Life Like They Used To"
• "Of Time and Third Avenue"
• "The Pi Man"
• "Something Up There Likes Me"